Intro Blurb
“You are USCM Force Reconnaissance (FORECON) marine from the USS Hanyut, stranded on this planet after your team was wiped out while investigating the distress signal. With your pilot dead along with the majority of your unit, you and your team have been running and gunning to survive… but with supplies low and food running out maybe your only means of survival is to move west to the crashed dropship to salvage anything useful.”
“Hardcore survivors with poor equipment and skills, prove you’re the best of the best”
Well, thing’s haven’t been going well for FORECON, you’ve lost most of your gear, your specs and SGs are either dead or lost their gear, and you have no armor against the xeno menace. How are you gonna make it off this rock of a colony alive? Your chances are QUITE slim.
Skills and Equipment
If you want to survive, you need to know what you can and can’t do.
FORECON has 8 unique survivor spawns, but the most important ones are the CO, Synth, and Support Technician.
All Forecon members have Enginnering 2, JTAC 2, Medical 1, and Fireman carrying, this means that all members of forecon are capable of using sentries, repairing generators, interacting with APCs, effectively doing anything other than make a barricade. Due to having medical 1, all med injectors are instantly used with no windup.
as an added bonus, all members of FORECON are capable of spotting (although there is no spotter bino spawn on the map).
All members of FORECON spawn with an external webbing (crowbar inside), flashlight, drop pouch, and gun. The guns will be either a Mk2 or M4RA unless you are the Squad leader/CO/Synth. Rarely your M1911 (2 World Wars) sidearm will be replaced with a M39 and spare mags for it.
Support Techie
Master of All Trades
You are the most important person for FORECON’s survival if there isn’t a synthetic, you are the only person capable of constructing barricades and using the WEALTH of metal that’s scattered everywhere across the colony, you are also the only corpsman for your squad.
If you go down, the rest of FORECON is likely not far behind. PRIORITIZE YOUR LIFE OVER OTHERS.
You cannot risk getting fractured and dying.
Strat: Stay with the main squad, get supplies and metal, and immediately begin building up your base.
Scout Specialist, the Marksman:
Nightmare Wraith
You are arguably the best/coolest FORECON spawn, you get a fully functional M4RA custom battle rifle with 2 spare mags and the skills to use it, just remember to turn on burst mode.
Although you spawn separated from your armor, helmet, and cloak, all three of them are unmeltable and obtainable roundstart (see below). Once you obtain your cloak you’re able to sneak around the map undetected by xenos, and escape certain death with invisibility. Sadly, your NVGs are gone and you’ll need to make due with a flashlight and armorlight (assuming you manage to get your armor).
Your armor and cloak spawn in east reactor, on the other side of a resin wall
If you’re rescued you can ask req to buy you incind and impact rounds, and you effectively become a second scout specialist.
Strat: Generally rush your armor at east reactor (along with GL’s armor) before going for the Torando’s sentry, pick up metal as you move to the hold spot.
Smartgunner
Blaze of Glory
You’re the bog standard SG of FORECON, the problem? you’ve lost your armor, smartgun, and your NVGs are gone.
You’re armed just as any other member of FORECON, with your main difference being that you always get a SG sidearm rig with a M1911 (2 World Wars) and ammo. Your main priority should be getting your loaded smartgun back from A-Block. You’ll only get a single, half loaded drum, make sure to fire in short, controlled bursts to save ammo.
You’ll still have full power in your systems, so feel free to turn on your motion detector and call out any xenos approaching.
Sadly, your goggles did not survive the fight, and there’s no way for you to obtain a new pair short of req buying one (absurdly expensive) or getting it off a second smartgunner.
Strat: Go with main group west, split off to grab your gear. Make sure to grab the 30 metal that spawns slightly to the left and north of your metal, sitting on a table
Guns up. Good Luck.
Sniper
Argent Peacemaker
You’re a sniper specialist, only problem is that you spawn alone and your spotter’s dead, your sniper rifle has been left behind.
Now that you’re down from the rocks, your first order of action is to grab the MK2 from the body of your spotter and load it with some MK2 mags. You’re the only FORECON member to spawn with armor, and you spawn somewhat closer to the objective than the main group.
Your armor will allow you to cloak, but you shouldn’t EVER do this, FORECON needs every man they can get, and hiding out will have everyone call you a coward. Due to you lacking anything else special (you can’t get your sniper rifle back), you’re effectively a rifleman that spawns seperated from the group.
strat: The best course of action is to grab the scout helmet near your spawn and immediately attempt to get into the Typhoon. You can also try immediately rushing engineering to get power on [3 gens is enough to get entire colony power on temporarily].
Rifleman/Squad leader
Rolling Thunder
You have no special traits, nothing to make you stand out, but you don’t need those things. You have your weapons and a will to survive the xeno menace. The SL will always spawn with a shotty and box of slugs. There is no buckshot on the colony, so slugs are all you’re gonna get.
Prove you’re the best of the best, or die trying.
Strat: follow basic looting plans, make it out alive.
Alright, you your kit, but what is this map?
Chances Claim Map
This is the colony in fullbright, it’s a bit low-res because the forums decides to compress it horribly.
Now, lets zoom in a bit and draw lines on the looting strats and put them into their own categories.
The main push to get the bulk of your supplies.
For 2-4 marines (always bring the smartgunner).
The Main Push
As the main push, your primary objective is the RTO backpack and supplies located in the Typhoon, make your way west, past the sentry and blockade, grab the breaching C4, and enter the Typhoon to loot it, before taking the supplies to your hold.
Note - if you put away your breaching c4, it’ll always go into your uniform’s drop pouch, don’t forget it!
Path highlighted in Red
Here’s a Typhoon rush done solo, under the expectation that you aren’t playing SG (and thus, do not need to detour for your smartgun)
(Horrible Quality, link to the discord with higher quality here)
Generally 2-4 people should be doing this, perferably three, as moving the crate of supplies is quite slow and drones may attempt to ambush you as you try to get to the main hold. The Support Techie should tag along on this objective.
SUPPLIES GATHERED:
Along the way you’ll get a:
Flamer filled with welder fuel, welder tank, GL helmet, breaching charge (for Typhoon).
In the Typhoon you get a compact defib, an autoinjector pouch, 200 metal sheets, HPR (200x holo rounds), HMG, mk2 kit and ammo, small RTO pack, and a mini-sentry.
To obtain the metal you’ll need to make a functional hold.
for 1-2 marines (support techie cannot do this solo, due to needing space for holding med gear).
Metal Run
While the rest of the team goes to get the main supplies, your job is to make sure that there’s enough mats for them to MAKE a base, your path is highlighted in white,
note that the 200x metal box in south LZ will be covered by fog around the 3 minute mark, and will be effectively unrecoverable (as you cough and drop your crowbar/grab in smoke unless synthetic).
Use the C4 (highlighted in green) to blow up the leftmost rack, this gives you access to 50 metal and 30 plasteel (although there is a chance that the C4 can end up destroying it).
If done quickly, you should arrive at the hold shortly before the LZ fog hits. You will need to drop your ammo to make space for metal.
Here’s a (horrible quality) video of solo rushing the metal, do note that I miss a 30 metal spawn next to the bunker. Higher quality link on the CM discord here
SUPPLIES GATHERED:
280x metal
80x plasteel
1x flare box
To avoid getting obliterated by XX sentinels spamming slow spit (but mostly because you want spec gear), you’ll want to get armor
For the Forecon Marksman (Scout specialist), maybe 1 person can tag along to grab the extra armor.
Armor Rush
When you spawn in, your first priority is to IMMEDIATELY secure the armor located in NE hive, before doubling back towards the Tornado to wait for its doors to be opened, grab the sentry, and then make your way to the main hold.
As for the specifics of actually rushing it, the computers have the ability to open their linked shutters, all you need to do is open the first shutter, go to the APC, swipe your ID card to unlock it, and enable everything, the APC will always spawn with enough charge for you to use it.
Grab the armor (Prioritize the GL and Scout armors first) and toss them behind the shutters, close the shutters, and change into your scout gear. as you leave, close the 2nd set of shutters so that any drones melting the locks will have no way to chase after you.
Video of rushing armor within 1 minute (Note: I used a move order, you will only be able to get 2-3 armors out solo before drones can evo if you don’t have a move order. (Link to discord with higher quality here
Once you have your armor, move to the Tornado, and call out over comms for someone to ‘press the button’ on the Typhoon to open up the shutters, when they do, grab the sentry and begin moving towards the hold.
Note that you are walking into the XENO HIVE before they larvas are able to evolve, you cannot kill the larvas until you see one evolving, at most you can stab it once to crit and delay the time it’ll take to evo, if you end up killing a larva before they can evo to drone you should probably get to a safe spot and ahelp it BEFORE you get bwonked.
But wait, what is the sniper doing in all this? While I haven’t actually preformed the following strat ingame, I’d like to theorize here about a “Engi Rush” for the sniper
Sniper exclusive/untested
Engi Rush
grab the gear from your dead spotter, move north, grab the scout helmet, double back south and go through the building (can’t go east, the door is welded), break the window, climb in, grab the engi toolbelt and paper bin, break window south, climb into engi, and use the welding helmet to restore power.
Once you get 4-5 gens on (and don’t forget to turn on floodlights!), you can go east into colony and grab the beer vendor and bring it to the main hold.
After that? I dunno, you can try going for the C4s stored in the flare area (see: metal rush) to destroy the tunnel, or you can just hunker down at the main hold and contest any drones that are trying to weed the area.
TIMINGS:
These use the timings from my own solo runs where I am taking the fastest path, expect them to be off significantly depending on your teammates
Armor Rusher
A lot of waiting
30s - make it to shutters
37s - turn on APC power, Drop gun to have hand space, and open shutters
45s - grab GL armor in main hand
50s - grab Scout armor and begin juggling scout cloak and GL armor towards the shutters
65s - close shutters
1m 35s - arrive at Tornado, wait for button press. maybe go for binos in a building to your west? IDK, pass the time.
2m 50s- button pressed, grab sentry, move to main hold.
5m 10s - arrive at main hold.
Metal Run:
I hope you like juggling items
17s - exit building by east entrance
30s - break window, climb into garage
37s - garage by the central entrance after grabbing the 30 metal
1m - grab 200 metal crate, toss out droppouch items to make space for metal
1m 23s - grab c4, plant c4 on leftmost rack, grab 30 metal sitting nearby
2m - reach flare shack, grab the plasteel outside, go inside, grab a flare box and begin juggling metal/plasteel/your gun towards the main hold
2m 20s - climb through hydro hallway windows to make it to east LZ1, continue item juggling.
2m 50s - arrive at main hold.
Honestly, you can probably drop off your metal and go get the booze vendor in place of the sniper.
MAIN PUSH
Move and hope that a Drone doesn't ambush you.
1m - Arrive at Typhoon
2m - have all supplies loaded into crate, button pressed, leave Typhoon
3m - arrive at hold spot
Alright, you know what you’re gonna do to get the prep, but what does your hold actually look like?
The Hold
Generally FORECON holds at north LZ locks, with the LZ smoke allowing them to just focus on holding north and east, both of which are mostly open areas.
When built, FORECON’s hold will usually look something like this:
Yes, I know the cade placement isn’t great, i’m not a comtech player.
By creating the Rwall in the northwest you seal off the NW flank, and only need to worry about engi windows/fences/east,
and you can easily split into 1-2~ people per each section, with the support techie running around and upgrading/building more cades to make sure that the hold doesn’t fall apart.
Make mollies, shoot bugs, et-cetera, don’t die, make sure the support techie doesn’t die, this is standard surv stuff.
If you do well enough, you’ll manage to survive.
If this post gets enough attention I’ll write in a few details on things to do when you have no capable builders (Read: the support techie has 0 surv hours, went alone, and got capped at 00:06.). Roaming FORECON is usually crazy and will lead to your death unless you’re all robustos, but there’s some stuff I know that can give you a decent chance at survival (and a few frags).
Update log:
[1.0] - Posted Oct 2nd
[v1.1] - Added videos for Metalrush, Armorrush, and Main push to show how quickly they can be achieved, edited times